Fairy Godmother

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A magical being whose role is to help out the protagonist of a tale, sometimes appearing in their darkest hour to grant their fondest wish, sometimes through less direct methods (and often with the aid of a Magic Wand). Why they do this is seldom specified — nor why they failed to appear a lot earlier in the story when a little change could have made all the difference — though sometimes they are part of an agency or an organization. And yes, in early fairy tales, they were meant to be their ward's actual godmother.

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Examples:

Mayda Munny of the Richie Rich comic books gets one in a story, who gives Mayda a spell that makes her be pleasant and nice only up until midnight, when her normal bitchiness returns. At a party she attends at the Rich Mansion, the spell lasts for a good while, and Mayda is enjoying herself and her company is enjoying her presence, but strangely around 10 PM, Mayda reverts back to being a bitch and she ends up leaving the party on a sour note. The Fairy Godmother looks at Mayda through a crystal ball and realizes that her magic isn't powerful enough to overcome Mayda's level of natural bitchiness.

Fairy Tales

Charles Perrault's "Cinderella" is probably the Trope Codifier. While most adaptations have the godmother appear out of nowhere, it is noteworthy to mention in the original Perrault text, she is literally Cinderella's godmother and actually seems to live with the family.

In "Sleeping Beauty", she had seven, or twelve, in Charles Perrault or The Brothers Grimm respectively. However, after they made their initially good wishes, the fairies do never return to aid Sleeping Beauty (though the seventh fairy in Perrault's version puts the rest of the palace - except the king and queen - to sleep so the princess won't be lonely when she awakens). Many variants — such as "Sun, Moon, and Talia", an older variant, and in fact the oldest known — have no fairy godmothers at all, however.

Madame d'Aulnoy uses this trope in "The Blue Bird" and "The White Doe", where the fairy godmothers help rivals of the protagonists. Several fairy godmothers, including an evil one, appear in "Princess Mayblossom".

Her story "Finette Cendroun" is an early Cinderella variant that plays the fairy godmother trope straight however, and even predates Perrault's use of the trope.

In Henriette-Julie de Murat's literary fairy tale "Bearskin", the princess had a fairy godmother who is quite offended that she was not consulted about her goddaughter's marriage and so refuses to help for a time.

Another de Murat fairy tale, "Anguillette", plays this trope tragically. Princess Hebe is blessed with all sorts of great gifts, but is warned that when she falls in love, the love will get out of control. Hebe falls in love with a prince, but she ends up marrying another prince. This leads to the two princes killing each other in a duel.

In "Donkeyskin", the godmother delivers advice rather than gifts. Ironically, it does not help the heroine at all.

Deconstructed in the story of "Rapunzel", Dame Gothel, the witch who keeps Rapunzel prisoner, is not only her godmother (which is the actual meaning of "Dame Gothel"), but was a fairy in earlier versions, including the Grimm's original publication. This is also the case in early French versions.

In the Grimms' "One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes," the heroine, Two Eyes, is aided by a mysterious lady. Some translations and retellings refer to her as her fairy godmother.

In the Grimm's "The True Bride," a mysterious fairy helps the heroine complete three Impossible Tasks demanded by her stepmother. Once again, some translations and retellings refer to her as her fairy godmother.

In the video Anastasia/Quasimodo  We Hit a Wall, Anastasia and Quasimodo's fairy godmother turns out to be their housemaid Cinderella. She grants them their wish to become more attractive, so that that they won't ever be looked down upon for their looks again.

Twice Upon a Time has a Deadpan Snarker version who tries to help the heroes out. She doesn't seem to have much faith in Ralph and Mumford, nor in Rod Rescueman, the rookie superhero she hires to help them on their quest.

Films — Live-Action

Deconstructed in Ella Enchanted, with a godmother who's a fairy but is inconspicuous about it, and another fairy who has a bad habit of going to the christenings of complete strangers and giving them magical gifts they don't want or need. In the original book, however, Mandy is Ella's actual Fairy Godmother, and she plays this straight, being a Cool Old Lady; Lucinda just happened to be at the baptism.

In A Simple Wish, Martin Short plays Murray, the world's first and only fairy godfather, whose first assignment is to grant a little girl's wish that her father could get the lead role in a Broadway musical... while simultaneously fighting an evil fairy-godmother-turned-Wicked Witch's plot.

In Maleficent, Aurora mistakenly believes that Maleficent is her Fairy Godmother. And she effectively is.

The 1987 movie Maid to Order has a spoiled heiress (Ally Sheedy) getting busted for drug use among her many wild acts. This pushes her father to off hand wish he'd never had a daughter. The next day, the woman is bailed out by her fairy godmother who reveals that, sure enough, she's used magic to effectively erase the heiress' entire existence. The woman now has to work as a maid to learn some humility.

Jessie: Some fairy godmother you are! I thought you turned maids into princesses!

Stella: Some maids deserve to be princesses and some princesses deserve to be maids.

Literature

In The Dresden Files, Harry has one of these, literally, and The Fair Folk are a lot scarier than in the Disneyverse. The kick is that Cinderella's fairy godmother would have been with the more Disney-esque Summer Court, while the Leanansidhe, Harry's godmother, comes from the Winter Court. While scary, dangerous, and insane by most reasonable standards, Lea truly does want to protect Harry and wants the best for him...in her own way. Due to a Magically Binding Contract, he belongs to her, and she sometimes tries to collect. What happens if she wins? You know those hunting dogs that herald her arrival? ''They weren't dogs originally.'' Later, Harry's "contract" was bought off by Lea's boss, Queen Mab, giving Lea the chance to prove herself to be very good (if scary) to have as an ally.

Interestingly, during Changes she plays with the classic Cinderella storyline by dressing Harry for a very different kind of party. Being of the Winter Court, her gifts vanish at noon instead of midnight.

Played with in Witches Abroad, where the protagonists are trying to stop a fairy godmother from making the peasant girl marry the prince.

Magrat is also (temporarily) a Fairy Godmother, having been left a wand with a tendency to reset to pumpkins by Desiderata Hollow.

Ella: Everyone gets two. The good one and the bad one. You know that. Which one are you?

In-series fairy godmothers are treated as a subset of witches, and in some cases the two seem to blend into each other; in Carpe Jugulum, which starts as a parody of Sleeping Beauty, the Lancre witches are invited to attend the birth of the princess.

In The Ugly Duckling by A. A. Milne, the protagonist (a princess, not a duckling) has a relative who fits the fairy godmother role, though technically she's actually a great-aunt.

In Mercedes Lackey's Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, "fairy godmother" is a trade taken up by women who can't fill the roles that "the Tradition" tries to shoehorn them into and end up with great magical power as a result. The job of being a fairy godmother involves using the Tradition against itself to minimize the harm done to everyone involved; they were originally actual fairies, but eventually the role got handed down to human women and the "fairy" part was only retained as a title.

In Andrew Lang's Prince Prigio, the queen does not believe in fairies and so insists on not inviting them for their first son. They show up anyway and shower him with gifts until the last godmother says that he shall be too clever.

In the Old Icelandic "Tale of Norna-Gest" (c. 1300 AD), baby Gest is visited by some norns who make wishes for his life. The set-up is very similar to that of "Sleeping Beauty", and the "norns" are functionally Fairy Godmothers. Though, like in "Sleeping Beauty", they do not return after they made their initial good wishes.

In C. S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, Uncle Andrew explains that he may well be the last person to literally fulfill this trope: his godmother, Mrs. Lefay, was one of very few women alive with fairy blood. However, she was apparently not very nice to anyone other than him, and wound up locked up in prison toward the end of her life. She was also the one who passed on the magic dust that Uncle Andrew used to travel between worlds.

Inverted in Teresa Edgerton's Goblin Moon, in which the Duchess (a three-quarter fairy Uneven Hybrid) was supposed to become Elsie's godmother, but arrived so late to the christening ceremony that a substitute was chosen. Outraged at this perceived insult, she plotted revenge for years by pretending to consider Elsie her "goddaughter" nevertheless, but scheming in secret to marry her off ... to an evil troll disguised as a Prince Charming, who'd drink the girl's blood on their wedding night.

In the Bruce Coville short story "Am I Blue?", Melvin is a Camp Gay Fairy Godfather in every sense of the term. As an angelic being who, as a human, was killed in a gay-bashing, he insisted on reclaiming the term when choosing his Heavenly career.

Nora Darkh in Legends of Tomorrow gets tricked into taking the place of Tabitha, who is supposed to be a classic Fairy Godmother, but in reality is an evil Jackass Genie. While Nora gets exasperated by the wishes of kids under her charge, she actually takes the job seriously, and is not above helping the Legends when they need her magic.

Mythology

Norse Mythology: Prose Edda relates that besides the three chief norns Urd, Skuld and Verdandi, "there are yet more norns, namely those who come to every man when he is born, to shape his life". Obviously these norns who visit newborn children to "shape their lives" are functionally the same beings as the fairies dispensing blessings (or curses) on newborn children in many fairy tales.

Theatre

Ms. Fairy Godmother from Big Bad is portrayed as shrill and demanding, to the point of coming off as less sympathetic than Evil Stepmother.

In the first Banjo-Kazooie game, Gruntilda has a sister named Brentilda who is a fairy godmother. If you find Brenty, she will give you the answers to questions about Grunty in the "Grunty's Furnace Fun" mini-game, and refill your health if you're running low.

The Dark Parables, being based on classic fairy tales, have a number of these. One of them is actually one of the villains.

The Fairy Godmother from Cinderella appears in Revolve 8 Episodic Dueling as Cinderellas producer (with Cinderella being a motorsports enthusiast pop idol). Not only is the Fairy Godmother depicted as being a lot more attractive than most versions, shes also a lot harsher, having roped Cinderella into a contract that has to be renewed every single night before the stroke of midnight. Ultimately, as revealed in both her storyline and Cinderellas, she was once an idol herself in her younger days and that she truly believes that Cinderella could one day be the perfect idol.

Web Animation

A rather dark example can be found in RWBY in keeping with the Fairytale Motifs, Big Bad Salem acts as the fairy godmother for her subordinate Cinder Fall(who's based on Cinderella). Cinder's fondest wish is power, so Salem helps Cinder acquire power and learn how to properly use it so she can better serve Salem's goals.

Webcomics

El Goonish Shive: Weird version. Tedd's god-father is Adrian Raven, the half-immortal elf who teaches history at Moperville South. Raven's mother, Pandora, has decided that this makes Tedd her "grand godson," and that she needs to help and protect him. Unfortunately, Pandora is insane, bored, and wasn't really that helpful even back when she was sane. Her first attempt to help Tedd results him turning into a girl in the middle of a crowded comic shop and getting hit on by creepy guys. Later attempts include her randomly empowering Tedd's friends with magic, invading his girlfriend's dreams, and roping one of his friends (who she previously randomly empowered) into fixing a problem Pandora herself caused.

In the setting of Peritale and Life of Melody, being a Fairy Godparent is one of the fairy realm's most prestigious jobs, tasked with fulfilling fairy tales in the human world. The protagonists of these tales usually have no actual say in the matter, which can lead to... complications:

Peritale's main plot centers around an eager young magic-less fairy named Periwinkle and her quest to become a godmother. Her first case brings her to a bright young witch named Vallery, who's destined to fall in love with the Prince and live Happily Ever After... but is also a huge recluse who's generally satisfied with her life, and not particularly interested in the whole "fall in love" arrangement. Over the course of Peri's journey, she learns a great deal about humans and fairies alike.

The B-plot focuses on Peri's eldest sister Hydrangea, an experienced godmother... who finds out that her latest charge, Agatha, is actively working to keep fairies and other magic types like her from meddling in her affairs. The pair do ultimately reach an agreement to carry out Agatha's tale, and swap positions on the matter very quickly; Hydrangea immediately regrets her choice to attach herself to someone so insufferable, while Agatha is delighted to learn of her destiny as "Greatest Champion".

In Life of Melody, fairy godfather Razzmatazz has grown frustrated with humans' "uncooperative" nature, and comes up with an idea to circumvent it: adopt his protagonist as an infant and raise her himself until she's old enough to complete her tale. He finds the child alongside a beastman named Bon, and the two of them agree to raise her together. The three of them briefly appear in Peritale, by which point Razz has rejected the tale altogether, left the fairy realm for good, and settled down with Bon to raise their daughter in the human world.

One of these appeared in The Smurfs, and in a rather extreme variation of the theme, she was the actual godmother of a young child, and also a Mama Bear who was willing to hunt down and use violence against anyone who tried to harm or kidnap her godson, turning people into mice if they wouldn't cooperate in her quest to do so.

Episode "Janine, You've Changed" of The Real Ghostbusters shows Janine under the influence of an evil demon passing as her fairy godmother. This as a way to explain Janine's radical changes in look and behavior throughout the series (which were due to Executive Meddling).

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